If you’re feeling like you’ve hit a creative rut lately you may be looking for effective ways to boost your brain power. Fortunately, there are several small steps you can take to enhance your cognitive skills and regain your creative abilities at work and at home. Following are five effective ways you can boost your brain power and increase creativity.
Nourish Your Brain With the Right Food
Your diet plays a huge role in how well your brain functions throughout your lifespan. Your brain needs essential vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients to fuel you through your busy work day and help you process new information quickly. You’re probably familiar with the foggy feeling that can occur when you’ve skipped a meal or have eaten too much junk food. Along with getting at least eight glasses of water a day, try to incorporate plenty of leafy green vegetables, fruits, and lean proteins into your diet. Nuts, seeds, and salmon are also great ways to enhance your cognitive health and increase your creative thinking skills.
Get Enough Sleep
Your body needs sleep for many reasons. One of the most important reasons you should get at least seven to eight hours of sleep is to boost your ability to think creatively. When you don’t get enough sleep your body does not receive the rest it requires to repair all of the neural connections within the brain. This leads to a slower response time and an inability to form new ideas. Chronic lack of sleep can also affect your memory and verbal creativity. Try to get at least eight hours of sleep a night so you can enhance your creative abilities at work and at home.
Value the Creative Arts
Another way to boost creativity is to surround yourself with meaningful artwork. Not only does exposure to art enhance your creative thinking skills as you age, but it can also help foster a love and appreciation for art in children. Consider hanging up large abstract wall art throughout your house or your office in order to add personality and style to your space. Along with displaying art to enhance the cognitive skills you might want to consider getting involved with your own forms of artistic expression. Journaling, painting, drawing, and even learning a musical instrument can all be effective ways to boost your brain power, especially as you get older.
Keep Your Brain Active As You Age
Your brain consists of both white and gray matter. The gray matter makes up the problem-solving and memory areas of your brain. As you age you lose gray matter at a higher rate. A loss of gray matter is negatively associated with decreased cognitive function, regulating body movement, creating and storing memories, and creative problem-solving skills. One effective way to boost your brain power and increase creativity is to exercise your mind. Just like your muscles need regular physical exercise to stay strong, your mind does too. Solving a jigsaw puzzle, completing crosswords, and playing number games are all great ways to exercise your mind and retain gray matter. There are also games you can download onto your phone which are designed to enhance your creativity.
Change Up Your Routine
When you stick with the same routine day in and day out you basically go through your day on autopilot. In other words, you move through your daily schedule without much thought or effort. This causes you to lose creative thinking and problem-solving skills. Consider changing your routine in order to stay sharp and increase your creative energy. Try taking a different route to get to work or pick a different time of day to go work out or complete your errands. By changing things up and trying different things you’ll retain your cognitive awareness as you age and enhance your ability to think outside the box.
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While everyone goes through a creative rut from time to time it’s important to not let it get you down. By applying these tips to your life and focusing on your brain health you’ll be able to bust out of your creative rut and enjoy a higher quality of life.